Thunder Without Rain
by Owai
Summary: Even with a storm on the horizon, there’s no telling when the rain will fall. [SasuNeji]


**Title;**Thunder Without Rain  
**Rated;** R, overall.  
**Summary;** Even with a storm on the horizon, there's no telling when the rain will fall.  
**Author's Note:** Chronological order, if you wish and please. For Laur, because I love her x

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**I. Fingerprints**  
Sasuke is in Neji's parents' room. This is something Neji knows even before he opens his eyes, even as the soft pulse of sleep and the sweet, comforting arms of unconsciousness still hold him. Sasuke is in his parents' room.

Neji is awake.

He is awake, and his eyes are opening to the half transparent light of almost-morning. It is white with a touch of blue; a pure, pure dawn that hints of the previous night's snowfall, a fact that Byakugan eyes confirm even as they watch Sasuke discovering a world no longer touched by time, a world not the Uchiha's own. It is Neji's world, but one he lives outside of, one that he keeps trapped like a town in a globe of water (his own memories scattered like the swirl of faux snow), cherished, but from a distance.

Sasuke must have a place like this, Neji thinks. A place where all the memories come to roost and crow with the delight of a past once lived, a life once loved. Yet that is Sasuke's, and this is Neji's, and each has no business in the other.

But Sasuke is leaving his fingerprints in Neji's realm, encroaching upon Neji's space as the green of spring encroaches upon winter. Sneaks inside until each trace of ice and snow has melted and all that remains is the new life created from what once was dead. They have shared this house together for two months now, guardian and charge, and Sasuke has done nothing but leave fingerprints. The Byakugan can see them, and Neji wipes each away with a careful sweep of hand and cloth, of will and fear.

Fingerprints do not last long in a clean, cold house. Even burned into wood, they can be sanded away.

Neji slides slim fingers into the cold space between his pillow and futon and closes his eyes. He breathes slowly as Sasuke touches and wanders, and wonders how long the snow outside his window will continue to fall.

**II. Rumors**  
"Do you think it's true?" Tenten asks one day as she drops into the grass gracelessly beside Sakura, all sharp angles and too-lean muscle. Sakura is watching them again—watching the boys between glances at her book, though she pretends sometimes that it's the other way around just as she pretends that she's set childish things and dreams aside. Tenten, though, knows different. She had dreams like these too, once.

The grass is new and bright, finally freed from its winter container. The day is unusually hot, much too hot for spring—much too hot for even summer. A heat wave has hit the village, and none of them, none of the sane ones at least, have been working.

As if suddenly noticing Tenten's presence, Sakura looks over before turning her eyes forward once more, movements like her expressions, slow and understated. In the near distance, Lee, Neji and Sasuke are making another lap around the village, their pace slow and languid as the afternoon sun shimmers in the sweat of their bodies. Tenten watches them for a moment as she listens to Sakura's silence.

"Do I think what's true?" Sakura finally says, her eyes following Neji, who is slowing down near a bench and tugging at his shirt. He's the only one of the three who is not bare chested, and though Lee keeps running (turning backwards and shouting), Sasuke's jog slows to a walk. He puts his hand on the back of the bench as Neji pulls off his shirt, and though Tenten can't see the Uchiha's expression, she can imagine it. She thinks for a moment that she might despise it, and suddenly wonders if Sakura hates Neji's expressions as well.

"Neji and Sasuke," Tenten says. There isn't really a description but for the two names, and she doesn't add one.

A hot wind licks its way across Tenten's skin, strokes the back of her neck where sweat has been collecting for hours. It sends a shiver through her, though a moment later she's hot again, hot and exhausted as she watches Neji brush a hand over his bare shoulders, watches Sasuke watch Neji. She knows Sakura's watching, too. She wonders if Neji is, and thinks, though the notion is strange, that maybe he isn't.

The two stand for minute more before Neji starts running again. Sasuke though, turns and looks right at the two girls before his distant features pull into a smirk and he turns away, following the pendulum swing of Neji's long hair pulled into a high ponytail.

"No, I don't think it's true," Sakura says after a long moment of silence.

"Neither do I," says Tenten.

**III. Gestures**  
Sasuke's smirk is easy and knowing, loud in the quiet hospital room. It is impossibly infuriating, but Neji's cold anger is hardly affected by the heat it offers, but the suggestion it makes to the otherwise empty room. _Hold your tongue._

He doesn't.

"Don't," Neji hisses, but Sasuke continues to smirk and though his head his bandaged along with another third of his body, he shows no shame. The injuries, it seems, only serves to make him more smug. _My injuries,_ something inside Neji hisses, _those should be mine—give them back to me._

"Don't?" Sasuke prompts, and a moment later, Neji is leaning toward him, hands planted on the bar of the hospital bed, face a cold sheet of ice. Sasuke doesn't move back as he should, but Neji doesn't expect it. He has no problem with the proximity, no issues with meeting the Uchiha face to face.

"Keep your goddamn heroics to yourself, Uchiha."

Sasuke laughs, though his laugh is more of a snort, "Heroics?" he says, breath warm and oddly sweet on Neji's face. Sasuke makes the word sound absurd, and Neji knows that it is, but cannot assign a reason to this—a reason for Sasuke's actions, a reason for his own anger. He needs somewhere to look, and his fingers tighten on the bar.

"Just don't. I can handle myself—can always handle myself. I don't need _you_." Neji realizes that it sounds wrong, that something is wrong. He takes a step away and makes it look angry, but he can tell that Sasuke is not fooled. Somehow, Neji has become a transparent screen to him. Between the fingerprints, he sees what Neji does not.

"Right, Hyuuga," Sasuke sneers at Neji's back as he leaves the room and nearly collides with Naruto as he turns outside the door. The blonde sidesteps, though, his agility for once overcoming Neji's natural grace. Neji's angry, icy eyes come up to meet blue ones and Naruto suddenly looks guilty.

_He was listening_, Neji realizes, and pushes past.

"His body moved on its own," Naruto says after him, _right again, right again_, and Neji keeps walking.

**IV. Burial**  
The summer air is stale and hot, begging to be ignited, though Sasuke has no intention of hurrying. He makes his way through the halls of a house that had once been a home, but now consists of nothing more than ruins. Ruins of a life left behind, of memory crumbled but never laid to rest. The place is full of ghosts, but in Sasuke's breath is a burning exorcist that he knows just how to employ. Slowly, he walks empty halls and stirs up everything but dust.

Neji has followed him here, just as he always follows. He's waiting just outside the Uchiha crest, pretending to be discrete but also pretending to watch, when Sasuke knows he isn't. He supposes the Hyuuga is affording him some kind of privacy, but he wishes Neji would just come in already. Wishes he would stop hovering just close enough for Sasuke to want, but too far away to grasp.

Sasuke finds a bottle of whiskey in a creaky cupboard, and takes a drink. It burns its way down his throat, emphasizes his carnality and reminds him of what he's come here to do. The glass bottle is solid in his hand, useless when it shatters against the wall and coats the boarding in a cascade of amber liquid, though with the air so dark, the wall merely looks stained. Sasuke takes a step back and makes a seal before the air around him bursts into flames.

Later, when he walks away from the burning pyre smelling like smoke and looking like death, he catches sight of Neji much closer than the Hyuuga normally allows. Embers from the fire blow in the wind around Neji's crisp outline, give his eyes a much warmer glow than is natural, though Sasuke thinks there is almost something there in that even, empty gaze. It aches by way of memory (for he remembers what it is to want a mere _look_), but the soft glow on Neji's pale skin makes him ache in a different way.

"Tch. You should have just come in," he says, though he is not pleased when a look of near-shock crawls its way across Neji's face. It annoys Sasuke that for one with such good eyesight, Neji is almost completely blind. There is a sharp sliver of familiar anger that inches its way up Sasuke's spine and settles, ready, in his shoulders.

"There was no need," Neji says stiffly, and though his words are calm and casual as always, there is a sudden snap in the air. Sasuke, who has never been able to take Neji by surprise in all these months, has him pinned against a tree now as if it is nothing. He wonders if Neji has grown soft, if he has grown comfortable. _Maybe,_ Sasuke thinks, _I just want it more_.

"Do you ever do anything that isn't based off of _need_, Hyuuga?" he says, so close as the flames lick at his back. His own fiery eyes gaze back at him through the reflection of Neji's own, and he has to close them before he can feel their lips barely touching as the older boy answers.

"No," he whispers.

**V. These Days**  
Neji is in denial.

Hinata sits on the veranda in the sun as Neji prepares for a mission beside her. His ANBU gear is scattered in the only way that Neji can possibly scatter something—with an odd contempt for disorder. The white and red falcon mask shines dully in the late summer sun, and Hinata watches it steadily as her peripheral vision catches Neji's graceful, methodical movements.

Sasuke is in the yard several feet off. He sits beneath a tree, already dressed, and watches Neji not watch him.

Hinata sighs and lifts her eyes from the mask to study Neji's profile. His dark hair is unbound and hides a good portion of his face as he bends over to buckle a pack to the side of his leg. Even at this angle, though, his eyes are oddly intent. He's too focused for such a menial task.

"Um, Niisan," she says, having had the odd thought that maybe she could slip into the topic, though now that she's started she realizes she has no idea _how_.

Neji looks up sharply, quickly, and Hinata's eyes widen. He looks like a cat that's just been caught after eating the family canary, and Hinata blinks in confusion.

"Yes," he says, eyes unwavering on her own. She conspicuously glances at Sasuke, who is still staring, and hopes that Neji gets the hint. He doesn't even blink, and she looks away.

Hinata wants to say _Maybe I can help,_ or even, _You're being ridiculous, _but instead says,

"Ah...how...how long will you and Sasuke-kun be gone?"

"No longer than a week," Neji grunts in return, and goes back to his preparations. In a week, it will be autumn. Somewhere in the distance, dry thunder rolls a discordant melody to the chirp of birds in the yard. Hinata lifts her eyes from Sasuke's seated figure and looks up at the clear, blue sky.

"It'll rain soon," she says. She hopes. It has been a dry, dry summer.

**VI. Rainstorm**  
A torrent of water hurls itself against the rock formation that borders their tent, and Sasuke, glad for their choice of campsite, stands just inside the lip of canvas and looks at the sky. It is a mottled gray—the color of mothballs—and has just begun to release its heavy burden, though the water is coming in a cascade already.

It is the third day of their mission, and it is Neji's turn to set the perimeter for the night. Sasuke looks out into the rain and tries to remember how long ago Neji left.

After a few more moments, he decides he does not remember, but grabs a cloak anyway and sets out into the rain. He reconciles his almost-worry with the fact that Neji has told him, in the past, to mind his own business when it comes to the Hyuuga's safety—and Sasuke does not take orders well. It takes a few minutes in the rain for Sasuke to realize that he's taking on Neji's habits of denial and blindness, and resolves to remedy that upon the first opportunity. He's tired of waiting for Neji to come around.

He finds Neji rigging an exploding tag in the underbrush about ten minutes from their camp, and doesn't bother to approach carefully, knows the Hyuuga has already seen him—always sees him, despite how much he tries not to. Sasuke stops a few feet away, and waits for Neji to straighten from his crouch.

"What are you doing," he says before turning. His words are almost lost in the downpour.

"Making sure you didn't get hit by a tree, Hyuuga," Sasuke says with a smirk and his usual bravado. Neji is soaked, having not taken a cloak or any means of rain shield, and his hair hangs in wet strings about his face, broken free from the normal tie. He looks unnaturally small in the wet clothing, and his eyes are almost flighty, as if afraid. Unused to this version of his former guardian, Sasuke raises an eyebrow and waits for Neji to collect himself.

Sasuke is not disappointed, and Neji does. What had been for a moment sheer uncertainty, is now transformed into the proud, dismissive arrogance that Sasuke is used to.

"I'm not careless," Neji says, picking his way gracefully through the underbrush. He reminds Sasuke of a deer for some reason, not a bird at all, and when Neji walks past, their shoulders brush.

"No, just stubborn."

Neji stops and turns his head, and then his body. He is a bird again.

"Excuse me?" he says tightly, and Sasuke can see the water dripping from his nose, from his chin, running down his cheeks. Sasuke steps forward, keeps going, and as usual, Neji does not back down.

"I said you're so..." he slips his hand behind Neji's neck and jerks the white-eyed Hyuuga forward, blood pounding, "fucking...stubborn, Neji," and kisses him.

Under the rush of the rain, Sasuke notices that there's no struggle before Neji kisses back.


End file.
